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Here's another thought: It's a piece in the opinion section. They publish a variety of people in the opinion section. Sometimes they publish Paul Krugman. Sometimes they publish Karl Rove or George W Bush (as ex-president). They do not present a unified ideological front.

That said, Rupert Murdoch has grandstanded in the past in rather transparently self-serving ways ("OMG google news is indexing my sites! but i don't want to make them stop, I want to make them keep doing it and pay me for the privilege somehow.")



Actually it is an editorial, which is the opinion of the paper itself.

The language mirrors Murdoch and the piece is not well written, there's a stench of editorial interference here.


My bad, then.

Anyway. Usually Mr. Murdoch is perfectly willing to put his name to shamelessly self-serving saber-rattling and rent-seeking pieces (e.g. "omg BBC. british media is government controlled. please get rid of my competition.")

The article itself, FWIW, is basically a straw-man argument saying that anyone against SOPA is a bunch of dirty Commies who think it's a God-given right to pirate everything for free. If you'd like to read it (ew), Google the URL and click the resulting link. Or hack your Referer: or pretend you're Googlebot. I regret that I was only the second or third person on the comments page to say it was a load of BS and not the first.

Postscript (2): as user mapgrep pointed out below, the WSJ has a bad habit of labeling editorials 'Review and Outlook'. Meh.


Postscript. While the WSJ may be pro-SOPA, it appears its readers aren't falling for it. Polls show anti-SOPA sentiment leading with an 80-point margin: http://online.wsj.com/community/groups/media-marketing-267/t...

(This is linked from the front page of wsj.com also, so it's not just an obscure corner of the site.)


There are two kinds of stories that normally appear in a newspaper's opinion section: bylined opinion pieces and editorials. The former are written by various people and should ideally represent a diverse range of viewpoints. But the latter are written by the paper's editorial board, and represent the paper's official stance. This appears to be the latter.


I bet if you actually counted the ratio of progressive vs corporatist editorials, the latter would be the overwhelming majority.

Let's not kid ourselves, the WSJ does have a pro-corporations agenda, it's owned by Rupert Murdoch; in Europe most people consider it a far-right paper. The Financial Times in comparison looks almost like a socialist rag.




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